Density Functional Resonance Theory of Unbound Electronic Systems

Density Functional Resonance Theory (DFRT) is a complex-scaled version of ground-state Density Functional Theory (DFT) that allows one to calculate the resonance energies and lifetimes of metastable anions. In this formalism, the exact energy and lifetime of the lowest-energy resonance of unbound systems is encoded into a complex "density" that can be obtained via complex-coordinate scaling. This complex density is used as the primary variable in a DFRT calculation just as the ground-state density would be used as the primary variable in DFT. As in DFT, there exists a mapping of the N-electron interacting system to a Kohn-Sham system of N non-interacting particles in DFRT. This mapping facilitates self consistent calculations with an initial guess for the complex density, as illustrated with an exactly-solvable model system. Whereas DFRT yields in principle the exact resonance energy and lifetime of the interacting system, we find that neglecting the complex-correlation contribution leads to errors of similar magnitude to those of standard scattering close-coupling calculations under the bound-state approximation.